Gage Georgetown Calling: Art Lecture Series with Emily Pothast

Emily Pothast is a visual artist, musician, curator, and critic whose research-based, interdisciplinary practice is informed by the history of mass media and its influence on politics, belief, and the construction of popular narratives. She received an MFA in printmaking from the University of Washington and is a regular contributor to The Wire Magazine, The Stranger, and Art Practical. Emily was the Director of Antique and Modern Works on Paper at Davidson Galleries from 2005-2010, and she has lectured at Seattle University, Portland State University, and the Seattle Esoteric Book Conference. As a musician, she has released several albums and has toured extensively as a founding member of the bands Hair and Space Museum and Midday Veil.

Lectures:

October 25 | Art of the Apocalypse

Perhaps the most mysterious and compelling book of the Bible, Revelation has fascinated and terrified believers and nonbelievers alike for centuries. This lecture provides historical background on the book itself and probes the strange world of seven-headed beasts, angelic beings, and beatific visions that populate illustrations of the Apocalypse from medieval Europe to the present day.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the printing press completely revolutionized Western society, influencing the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the eventual rise of broadcast media and the internet. This lecture provides context for the current mass media obsession with politics by tracing it to the era of incunabula, when the printing press was in its infancy.

“The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life,” wrote Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, written as Adolf Hitler was rising to power in Germany. This lecture will examine the uses of images in authoritarian politics throughout history and what the past can teach us about our current political moment.

Intuitive artists like Hilma af Klint and Yayoi Kusama are sometimes regarded as curious anomalies within the history of art, but “channeling” as a creative practice has deep roots in traditional societies all over the world. This lecture examines the work of outsider artists, spiritualists, and other visionaries united by their compulsion to render visually their interior worlds.

March 28 | You Are Not Invited (part 1): Seattle Art History from 2000 BCE to 1962

The ‘Arts in Seattle’ Wikipedia page begins with white settlers in the 19th century, but people have been making art here for over four thousand years. Part one of a two-part series, You Are Not Invited begins by exploring the visual practices of the original, indigenous local artists and concludes with the Northwest Coast Indian Art Exhibit at the 1962 World’s Fair. Along the way, we will consider the marks that such figures as Jacob Lawrence, Paul Horiuchi, Helmi Juvonen, Mark Tobey, and Morris Graves left on the emerging identity of the region.

The title You Are Not Invited works two ways. On one hand, it refers to an infamous art happening staged by Morris Graves in 1953, for which un-invitation cards were sent out to members of the local art community. On the other, it addresses issues of settler colonialism, gentrification, and displacement, exploring how the phenomenon of the uninvited guest has manifested throughout the history of Seattle.

April 25 | You Are Not Invited (part 2): Seattle Art History from 2000 BCE to 1962

Part two of this two-part series traces local developments in contemporary art from the 1960s to the present, incorporating oral histories of artists currently working to reverse the erasure of indigenous artists, artists of color, and women artists from the contemporary Northwest canon.